


she dances the dying swan

by velavelavela



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: Ballet, Character Study, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28702215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velavelavela/pseuds/velavelavela
Summary: It starts with a walk down the grove with the twins, their father, two beagles, and Sebastian Trent. Constance chassés from side to side quickly a few meters in front of them, full of the nervous energy that Verity keeps in her core. Constance has a lollipop in one hand and a pose in the other.constance and verity.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	she dances the dying swan

**Author's Note:**

> section excerpts are from french critic andre levinson on "the dying swan" which is a ballet solo that can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4uowripdw. i don't claim to know much about ballet but i did quite a bit of research this afternoon into terms/practices/etc and i HOPE i got them right lol.  
> anyway. i present to you: constance and verity backstory!

_ Arms folded, on tiptoe, she dreamily and slowly circles the stage. _

Constance has always danced prettier than Verity. There has always been something about the way her knees bend, her arms lift, the knife-sharp tips of her toes carve silhouettes into the studio floor, the stage. She looks better in white, her blonde hair pulled taut from her face. The feathers curling like a laurel wreath around the crown of her head. She has always danced prettier than Verity. Sometimes Verity’s umber eyes turn green.

When they go to after parties, Constance a lead and Verity a corps, sometimes Verity likes to segue into the role of Constance when her sister is off grabbing a water bottle. Verity likes to pretend that she is the star, the belle of the ball, and it is its own type of agony. She wonders why God has laid her in the shadow of her sister. She pretends to be someone else for a bit. But, Constance will always return to stand by her sister, suitors will always look at the two of them and only be able to tell them apart from the way Constance holds herself with her shoulders firm and lower back straight while Verity slouches into her sister’s shadows, there will always be a dinner at home celebrating Constance as Verity braces her elbows on a bunch in the white tablecloth.

They are fourteen when Sebastian Trent first takes an interest in them.

A friend of their father’s, Trent finds them elegant.

Their parents think nothing of it.

Trent sure does.

He is over at the estate more often than not when the twins return home from school or practice, in the study discussing something malevolent with their father, in the sitting room reading something with his leg crossed over his knee, in tweed, in a pea coat, in a hunting hat.

_ By even, gliding motions of the hands, returning to the background from whence she emerged, she seems to strive toward the horizon, as though a moment more and she will fly—exploring the confines of space with her soul.  _

Constance soaks her feet in a tub of hot water, Verity unties her shoes. The bathroom is of marble white tile and golden ornaments and a heavy, thin cross. The bathtub has clawed feet, as if it wants to dance, too. There’s a wan moth trapped between the inner window and outer window by the sink, and Verity sees it as something different than Constance. Verity sees something trapped. Constance sees something sublime. They are sixteen. They begin training.

It starts with a walk down the grove with the twins, their father, two beagles, and Sebastian Trent. Constance  chassés from side to side quickly a few meters in front of them, full of the nervous energy that Verity keeps in her core. She has a lollipop in one hand and a pose in the other.

As they approach the pond, the swan glides across the water to meet them. Constance does a twirl, a deep plié, and comes back to the others. Trent nods at her once, and this is not something Constance is used to, and Verity isn’t used to it either, Constance not receiving praise for her dancing, even dancing with the purpose of calming herself.

“Watch out,” their father says, a hand on Trent’s shoulder as the swan approaches from behind, making rude noises.

“He’s evil,” Constance says, putting her lollipop fully into her mouth, the pale stick left in the cool air, “and he bites.”

“He’s not evil, he’s angry,” Verity finds herself saying in response.

“There  _ is _ some evil in the world,” Trent responds then, falsely sagely, and nods, placing a hand on each of the twins’ shoulders “but I am here to ask you two to help me vanquish it.”

Constance and Verity exchange a look. Constance beams. Verity withdraws.

  
  


_ The tension gradually relaxes and she sinks to earth, arms waving faintly as in pain. _

They learn how to kill. Constance does it well. Verity tries her best. It isn’t hard to take a life. It’s harder to clean it up.

One evening, Constance sinks a knife into the stomach of a criminal on the way to their dance practice. She twists it, she slides it out, and the blood somehow gets on her ballet bag. As Verity prays for the dead man, Constance scrubs the white fabric with a rag. The criminal breathes raggedly. His blood sops into the carpet.

Verity unclasps her hands, and they make it to class ten minutes late.

When they’re twenty-one, Trent introduces them to the Russian assassin, Raven, by picture, satellite footage, and voice. Their true aim is to be better than her. Verity sips strawberry soda from a curly straw, lounging as Constance stretches her legs, her arms, her core. This is when Trent is truly angry for the first time-- they are no longer children to him. Constance’s dancing is a hobby. Verity has already given it up, why can’t her sister? He screams at Constance. Verity shatters her glass at his feet. This is also the first time he has been stood up to. He is livid.

Constance returns to the stage, her hair pulled even tighter back from her pale face, her eyes lined in white. She dances the dying swan. Verity sits in the audience alongside hundreds of others, she sits in a box and holds the program as a tube in one hand, the other lying delicately on the railing. Constance is on pointe, moving across the scene, her breath held staunch in her lungs, her arms flowing up and down as if she is swimming, submerged underwater. Trent is nowhere to be found. This will be the last time Constance dances.

The twins are not high up enough in rank to know how H.O.P.E. has formed, but they know that their time has come to face their rival bird. They find flashy white armored bodysuits lying across their hotel room beds. The jets are white. Everything is pale as the moon and sleek to the touch. H.O.P.E. claims religion, claims purity. Verity knows this is not the truth. So, when the two of them encounter Raven for the first time, Verity grins and looks out of the corner of her eye at her sister, just a bit taller than herself, hair just a bit prettier, and rehearses again,

“We’ll be your murderers for tonight.”

It obviously goes south.

  
  


_ Then faltering with irregular steps toward the edge of the stage—leg bones quiver like the strings of a harp—by one swift forward-gliding motion of the right foot to earth, she sinks on the left knee—the aerial creature struggling against earthly bonds; and there, transfixed by pain, she dies. _

Constance has always danced prettier than Verity. Verity should’ve been the one to die. Constance is skewered in front of her, pressed flush against her, and Verity can pretend for a moment, a blissful moment, that they are entertaining a horizontal pas de deux, Verity is lifting Constance into a  porté , that they will land and continue into plies. But this is not dance. This is Constance bleeding ruby red onto Verity’s chest, on Verity’s sword. This is Raven clipping Constance’s wings.

And when Verity falls, it is like falling out of someone’s arms, the air knocked out of her lungs as she lies on the wooden floor of the studio on her back. This is how it is to be, and while she can be brought back, Constance is gone. Raven has killed the swan in both of them.


End file.
